The Third Regeneration
picture source: Palak Trivedi
They say that all your cells completely replace themselves approximately every 7 years. Last year on this day was what I’ll call my third “regeneration.” And though I didn’t see it then, today, a year later, I know for a fact that the very fabric of who I am changed as I entered into an age where I actually remember most my memories.
Something that I didn’t consider, probably due to my privilege, is that the defining problems and obstacles of one section of your life aren’t the last or hardly the most deep that you will face in the span of your time on earth. Don’t get me wrong - the overcoming of these obstacles is incredibly important - they define how you continue to overcome your problems and influence the way you live due to them after they are gone, but they are not the end. When you have that ~thing~ in your life that has been in your way for years, taking over all your thoughts, growing intrusively like weeds through all your subconscious beliefs and the actions that ultimately follow, you believe that once you solve them or get through them, that everything on the other side will finally be okay and you’ll live happily ever after. This is what years of watching Bollywood movies gets you - a subconscious desire for that magical realism kind of life where your story has one big defining obstacle that upon being solved, gets you a happy ending, singing songs to music that comes from nowhere and dancing in the Swiss Alps with your twin flame soulmate.
But reality is so far from that. Although I learned and grew so much in the first 21 years of life, this past year leading up to my 22nd birthday has taught me that there is still so much struggle and pondering and questioning all my decisions left. And unfortunately sometimes you also learn that there are obstacles that you can’t necessarily overcome, but those that you simply must learn to live through. Not only did this year entail the experience that is 2020, but I also realized that even after you figure things out in that one section of life, there are times when you question if you really did. And that’s totally okay. It sucks - but it’s okay. Because in the end, the purpose of life isn’t finding a happy ending - it doesn’t exist. The purpose of life is to live through all the struggles and all the achievements and all the times you question if becoming a writer was the right choice when you could’ve picked something safer like being a dentist and if not choosing that means you aren’t fully recognizing your privilege or the sacrifices made for you to have that privilege in the first place *deep breath in*. The purpose of life, I think, is to live through all of these things and get to know yourself through it all. The only way to completely know anyone is to know them through any and every situation and happenstance possible. The same concept applies to knowing yourself.
And so to put it simply, the purpose of life, as I understand it to be so far, is to know yourself as well and as deeply as you possibly can and the only way to do this, LIVE. Know yourself through the values and experiences and identities that mean most to you. Know yourself as a writer, a teacher, a doctor, a mother, a traveller, a partner, a griever, a failure, a person of color, a person of the LGBTQIA+ community, a disabled person, a neurodivergent person, and anything else that means something to you. No one of these or any other experience, value, or identity completely defines who a person is, so live through and learn about the vast and complex being that you uniquely are.
I don’t claim to be an omniscient resource on philosophy or existentialism, nor do I think that this is indisputable. This is simply what I’ve come to believe in the span of the three people my mind has lived in so far. Who knows what I’ll learn by the next regeneration?